Chapter 23

Monday, March 15

11:45 p.m.

The cruiser's tires skidded into the dirt driveway.

Leigh launched forward to catch herself against the dashboard.

She'd tried. She'd tried to keep Boucher from visiting the scene but had gotten nothing but low growls from the lieutenant the entire drive from Concord. It was too late. His greatest fear had come to life, and there was nothing she could do to keep him in the car. No amount of logic or warnings would get through. Boucher's promise to Katherine Garrison rang in her head, over and over. I'd tear apart the son of a bitch responsible with everything I had left.

Carter, Boucher's ten-year-old son, was missing.

Heaven help anyone who got in his way.

From what she could see in the red-and-blue glow of police cruiser lights spinning around the front yard, the Boucher home was newer than the surrounding properties. Horizontal orange siding and white trim had worn from weather and neglect, the inset front door adding to the barn-like design. The structure sat on twelve acres of open land. One garage. Seven picturesque windows with perfectly styled white curtains facing toward Dartmouth College Highway. Multiple entry points. Any number of ways Carter Boucher could've disappeared.

Or been taken.

Pushing out of the car, Leigh caught sight of a striking, if nerve-wrecked, woman at the front of the house. Boucher's ex-wife. Carter's mother. She scrubbed her hands across her face, her weight shifting between both feet while she talked to one of the officers on scene. No makeup, hair pulled back, she didn't fit with the other women Leigh had gotten to know in this town. Used to working with her hands from the way her jeans had stained with dirt. Considering the divorce and the fact Boucher had a place of his own, it must've been just her and her son out here. She'd be the one to keep this land thriving, and she'd obviously held her own.

Boucher didn't waste time closing the distance between them and wrapped his ex in one of the strongest hugs Leigh had ever witnessed. He'd fisted his hands in her hair, as though his entire world depended on the strength of the woman in his arms, and Leigh couldn't help but feel she'd overstepped into an intimate moment. Parenting differences had crippled their marriage, but Boucher and his ex wanted the same thing: to bring their son home alive.

Leigh forced herself to look away, scanning the empty acres of landscape. She visually followed the line of trees that backed along the farthest length of the property. Dense forest made it difficult to see what was on the other side, but her memory filled in the blanks. The Mascoma River split into three separate veins just west of here. And on the other side? More woods. Secluded. No neighbors for at least a half mile in either direction.

That was what he would've wanted.

Insurance. A guarantee there would be no one to hear his victim scream. No one to identify him. The dark space at the back of her mind couldn't help but compare this location to those of her childhood home and Derek Garrison's. Woodlands, close to water, dark.

This disappearance didn't fit the profile of the unsub who'd tortured and killed Gresham Schmidt, Michelle Cross, and Roxanne Jennings. There was no pageantry. No body left to be found. Not to mention the differences in age. All three recent victims had been older than late thirties. This… This was different. The similarities between this abduction and that of her brother and Derek Garrison were lining up in her head. It was familiar and terrifying and heavy, but Leigh couldn't think about any of that right now.

The first forty-eight hours were critical, and she couldn't make a mistake.

She walked between two oversized trees standing guard on either side of a well-worn dirt path leading to the front door of the home. Recognition pulsed up her neck as Officer Donavon Pierce stepped away from Boucher and his ex-wife. She'd been so focused on the lieutenant, the faces of the men and women between her and the front door hadn't registered, but Pierce's seemed to be a little worse for wear. Bruising butterflied outward from his nose in layers of blues and purples and swelled under one eye. Not quite on their way to healing. One arm rested in a sling, and she couldn't help but recall his echoing scream as she'd driven the claw of her hammer into his shoulder. "Someone try to take your lunch money, Pierce?"

"This is a closed scene, Brody." Officer Pierce didn't even bother looking at her, pocketing his notebook and pen. Like training officer, like rookie. There were just some habits you couldn't break. "I know for a fact the FBI wasn't called in for this one. Lebanon PD has everything under control. We don't need you, and we sure as hell don't want you."

"I'm not sure that's your call." Every cell in her body wanted to call him out for the arsonist and liar he was, to strip him of that badge in front of his fellow officers and make an example nobody would ever forget. But apart from not having solid evidence for her accusations, this wasn't the time, and it certainly wasn't the place. Boucher deserved better than the petty feud between her and the residents of this town. "Because from where I'm standing, a ten-year-old boy is missing, and you could use all the help you can get."

Boucher lunged. He pinned Pierce against the side of the house by the collar, the officer's head snapping back with a hard thud. "That's my son, you son of a bitch. Forget protocol. Agent Brody is the only one here who has lived through a kidnapping like this, and you're not going to get in her way. If you even so much as think about making her job harder, I will have your badge and you charged with impeding this investigation. Do you understand me, boy?"

"Y-yes, sir." Pierce's fear fed that small part of Leigh that'd wanted to see the officer pay for what he'd done but elicited her protective instincts at the same time.

Boucher was holding himself back, and everyone on the scene knew it. They were waiting for the lieutenant's next move, caught between intervening and risking their own positions with the department.

"Good." That underlying growl in Boucher's voice was back, revealing how close to the edge he'd gotten in the past hour and a half. His cheeks had sunken, aging him in a matter of minutes. The shirt he'd donned in Concord collected wet stains across the chest. His ex-wife's tears. Boucher released Officer Pierce and charged for the front door. "Techs have already laid out a route through the house. Let's go, Brody."

She wasn't going to argue with him. There would be no point, and it'd only waste precious time Carter Boucher didn't have. Leigh struggled to keep up with the lieutenant while taking in everything she could. The front entry was piled with brightly colored sneakers streaked with grass stains and a single purse hung on a coat rack. The oriental rug—out of place with the plain banister leading to a lower level beside it—that'd seen hundreds of passes didn't even dare to wrinkle with Boucher's stride. She catalogued the filing cabinets set against one wall while looking for signs of an intruder at the window opposite. But her instincts said whoever'd taken the boy hadn't left any physical trace behind. Because this particular monster hadn't before. "No signs of struggle."

Which could mean Carter had either been lured outside or his abductor had surprised him. There were too many possibilities to build a theory as of yet. "What did your ex say?"

"The last time she saw Carter was right after she grounded him to his room before dinner. He was talking back about doing his chores." Boucher led her down a hall filled with framed photos of a kid who looked just like his dad, from birth to as recent as what she guessed to be the past few months. Strong nose. Dark hair. Formidable. Nothing could stand in his way. Boucher stormed into a room at the end, pulling up short. Then stopped cold. Color drained from his face. His throat convulsed to swallow whatever had built inside. "He… he didn't come when she called him to eat."

The harshness in his words had slipped.

Leigh took in the state of the ten-year-old's room. Minecraft decals had been strategically positioned above the bed shoved against the wall. A bookcase took up one corner, littered with an array of popular chapter and picture books from years of bedtime stories. The dresser showed off the start of a rock collection, but it was the bed that held her attention. A mix of pillows and blankets spilled across the floor. A smaller, brighter design stood out from the grays and blacks of the comforter and sheets. A toddler blanket. Loved and worn.

And resting on top of it—placed, not forgotten—a toy soldier.

Just like Troy's.

"He took my boy." The shock wore thin, leaving nothing but the rage Boucher had let ride close to the surface since the day they'd met. Hands fisted as tight as boulders, he took a step into the room.

She latched on to his shoulder. Hard muscle worked to dislodge her hold, but she'd partnered with enough men double her size to get a good read on what drove them. "It's evidence, Boucher. You're too close to this. Touch anything in this room, and you risk blowing the prosecutor's case when we find Carter."

Not if.

The lieutenant shook her off but seemed to get back a sliver of logic.

"He never went anywhere without that damn blanket. No matter how many times we tried to take it away, and then the divorce happened, and we didn't want to strip him of the only thing that gave him any peace." Boucher was doing everything in his power not to tear through this bedroom to find an answer, perched on the edge of falling victim to his own hostility. "That's how my wife knew."

Leigh tried to focus on the evidence in front of her. Not the vibrating waves coming off Boucher. She'd been here. At a loss, wondering what she could've done differently, if that little boy knew people were looking for him, that they would've done anything to bring him home safe. "I'll call Livingstone. See if we can get Chandler Reed over here to process the scene. I know Lebanon has their own forensic team who will want to stay involved, but the sooner we have answers, the better for Carter. Until then, are you going to be okay?"

"Don't worry about me. Worry about my son." He maneuvered out of the way to give her access to a room she already knew too well. The posters, the action figures, the rumpled sheets, and hidden treats. Comic book shirts hanging in the closet and socks left in the corners of the room. She knew all of it, even if the circumstances, timing, and the victim were entirely different. "That boy is all I got left. You bring him home. Understand me?"

"I understand. More than most." She pulled a latex glove free from her jacket. He couldn't help her with this, and they both knew it. He couldn't stay impartial. Not when everything in this room served as a reminder of what he'd lost.

The house creaked following another set of footsteps from the entryway. One of the other officers. "Lieutenant, the chief just pulled up. He's asking for you."

A war etched deep into Boucher's expression, one that held him hostage between his career and his family. They both knew what was about to happen. No officer—Lebanon or otherwise—was permitted to work a personal case, and there was nothing she could do to help him. He talked to her from over his shoulder. "The chief sent over the list of names you wanted from the school board while we were in Concord. I ran each of them through the database. There aren't any recent hits. Whoever killed our vics, he's planned this for months, if not years. He's too good to slip up now."

Then she'd been wrong. About all of it. The realization threatened to unravel everything they'd been doing these past few days, but she couldn't think about that right now.

"Talk to your ex. See if she remembers anything more. Anything unusual. I'll keep you in the loop. I give you my word." It wasn't much, but it'd have to be enough. As long as his son was missing, Boucher had to take the bench.

"Yeah." He slipped back into the hallway.

She stared after him as the past threatened to override the present. This room… She could feel the warmth, almost hear the laughter of that little boy in the photos. It sucked the oxygen from her chest and left her empty all over again. Turning in the center of the room, Leigh mentally catalogued everything. Dust patterns, the locked window, the blankets strewn across the floor. None of it out of place. Carter's abductor would've known his mother was home. Would've planned for that. So how had he gotten in?

Police hadn't been able to determine the killer's entry point in either the Brody or Garrison home. Detective Maynor had settled on the theory that Derek Garrison had been taken from the elementary school, while he believed her father had taken full advantage of killing Troy inside their own home. But neither of those scenarios were possible here.

In a matter of seconds, she was that seventeen-year-old girl again. Standing in a room that'd seen so much love, so much life, then left barren as though it'd been nothing but a dream. Believing she'd made it all up. That she'd made Troy up. That moment had set her on a path to graduating high school early, to leaving everything she'd known and loved behind, to taking on as many college courses as she could physically handle to graduate with her criminal justice degree and putting herself through the police academy. It was the moment she'd held on to to keep going when she'd gotten the news about her mother, when she'd handed her captain her papers, when she'd hit dead end after dead end in her brother's case.

Time hadn't eased the grief. She hadn't let it. Because it was that pain that'd sharpened her into something else altogether, and it was happening again. Stripping her free of the need to try to get this town to accept her and her family. Killing off her desperation to prove her father's innocence. Conditioning her into the agent Carter Boucher needed her to be. Not the one shaped by her brother's murder.

A fraction of the fury Boucher had shown took root as she stood in the middle of his son's room. She'd wasted so much time convincing herself she could conquer the past.

But the truth was, nothing she'd done had gotten her closer to Troy's and Derek's killer. And trying to force the pieces to fit wouldn't do a damn bit of good for Carter Boucher, the missing boy from Fruitland, or any of the other victims now.

Not until she let everything she thought she knew about herself, about these cases, about this town go.

"Talk to me, Carter. Why did he target you?" Leigh shoved a full rack of clothing to one side to get a better view of the closet. Kids hid all kinds of things they didn't want their parents to know about. Considering Carter Boucher's age, a closet would just be the beginning. Given enough time, he would move on to air vents and returns, prying molding off the wall, or shoving things under his mattress. She combed through an impressive Lego collection. Typical sets she'd expected, half-built, random pieces scattered across the carpet. Carter had stacked the empty boxes along the top shelf, and her personal obsession made quick work of matching each box to its set.

There was one set without a box though.

Leigh scanned the rest of the closet, finding the cardboard shoved into the corner on the floor. She pushed aside a pile of discarded stuffed animals to get to it.

Exposing the crawl space access door.